06:54 am - Tom Watson, please take special careI think the senior Tories caught up in this abuse scandal are horrible selfish people, but I don't think most of them are child abusers. I think Tom Watson MP is good to his core, and has done so many good things. But I think he is at risk of making an error.

It must be very difficult for him. He was told things which must have seemed almost impossible to credit, about phone hacking by newspapers, then about Jimmy Saville and so on. And all the allegations so far have been shown to be true, and there had been a massive establishment cover-up. What an emotional impact that must have had on him.

But now, in my opinion, unscrupulous or emotionally damaged people may have started to take advantage of him.

As I type this blog post, I’m half-smiling about how insane all this appears. It sounds like I’ve taken leave of my senses – just like they said I had during the early days of the hacking scandal. Maybe I have.

I don't believe he has taken leave of his senses. I think he is - quite understandably - overwhelmed by how many seemingly-impossible things have proved to be true, that it is hard for him to know what to credit. This does not make him bad or stupid. But it makes him vulnerable.

Many ordinary people have contacted me about suspicions they have had of a wider wrongdoing – in some cases so heinous it made me cry. They have talked of psychopaths marking children with Stanley knives to show “ownership”.

I think the knife thing is an urban legend. And I think there is a big risk that individual details like this will be proved false and people will use that to discredit the overall story. People want to restore the status quo. They want to believe it is all about specific individuals, who can be exposed once they are safely dead. People really, really want to believe that powerful people are basically benign. So Watson - a good, brave man - needs to be very careful this week.